The world of faith, the world over, has been reduced to rituals with little devotional substance. It seems to have very little impact on people’s spiritual advancement. Their lives show no marked change in behaviour, it is merely interjected with visits to places of worship, with the before and after picture looking the same.
Visits to respective places of worship are only a matter of conscious, nothing more, for most devotees. However, the real test of your faith lies in how people perceive you without really knowing what your faith is.
The east is most guilty of religious exhibition without any effort to practice the doctrine. Guru Nanak’s mission was aimed at eradicating the hypocrisy and taboo which, at the time, had infiltrated every fabric of life in the Indian sub-continent and beyond.
When the Muslim clerics asked Baba Nanak which faith is greater, Hinduism or Islam, he replied, without good actions, faith is irrelevant, and that without practical application, devotees of both will weep and wail in the end. Despite Guru Nanak’s and those of the successor Gurus efforts, the pernicious customs and rituals have crept back into Sikhism and there are no signs of abating but to the contrary are on the increase.
It’s time we cut out the pretence and hypocrisy in our respective faiths and implement the doctrine for the general well-being of humanity.
12 September 2016